[wiml]

There are some occupations where we aspire to that low level of risk. But it would mean that driving can't be an everyday activity for ordinary people.

No driving if you haven't been getting proper sleep; no driving if jet lagged. No driving if your attention is impaired by grief, stress, or impatience. Or if your annual physical reveals a risk. Or if you've ever had psychological complaints.

We should absolutely make transportation safer, but it's a continuum of tradeoffs.

[mrj]

That's probably not the thing to tell a parent whose kid just made a dent and a black smudge on a MachE. I don't want to over index on the "think of the kids" argument, but we don't take driving seriously enough. Wikipedia says:

    Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of preventable death for people aged 5–22, and the second most common cause for ages 23–67.

The linked article is astounding. The attitude in this thread is astounding, too. Because driving is ubiquitous and necessary in most of the US, we've become too accepting of the problems. Yes, if you're hitting the vape pen every day you should absolutely not be driving. Jetlagged? Take an Uber. Stroke risk? Give us the keys.

[wiml]

Okay, that was insensitive of me.

But yes, what you say is the logical consequence (except I'm not kidding about grief and impatience).

My point really is that if we want our kids not to get horribly injured or killed, we can't just focus on "other people" making bad decisions like driving drunk. We have to acknowledge that we've collectively built a system that requires people to put each other in danger with cars, and we have to think about how to change that. Cars bring a lot of benefits like autonomy and decentralization, how do we keep that but kill fewer people?

[Mawr]

> Cars bring a lot of benefits like autonomy and decentralization, how do we keep that but kill fewer people?

'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

This is a solved problem: look at the current state-of-the-art road design documents from the Netherlands. Apply. Problem solved.

[MichaelNolan]

Per 1 billion vehicle-km the US has 6.9 deaths and the Netherlands has 4.7 deaths. That’s obviously better much but I wouldn’t call it “problem solved”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

(Wikipedia links to itf-oecd.org/ where those numbers come From)

[rixed]

My guess is better road design means less miles driven by cars (as opposed to other, safer vehicles) and therefore fewer accidents overall, even if car crash statistics remain the same.

[ElectronCharge]

Buy a Tesla with FSD. No, it’s not L5 autonomy, but it’s already safer than the average human driver…and autonomous cars will only get better.

[Dylan16807]

The solution is to make the roads safer in general and/or reduce road use, not to take away people's keys for relatively tiny risk factors.

And in particular for the Uber situation, if taking a taxi 10 miles causes 15 miles of taxi-driving, that's less safe than driving 10 miles with a small to medium impairment.